I believe these are actually The Flairs. Either way Young Jessiefeatures here. This was the better "B" side to "Rabbit On A Log" whichwas the reviewed side in BB and which featured in a "New This Week"post way back in 29005

Sorry, Bill, but this is one of the better groupings, and they lost mewith that first tra-la-la. I'm also sorry Hot Lips had to run upagainst Little Johnny, but I'm almost always going to pick good blues-yover good jazz-y.

------------Besides the two I nominated, I was sorry to see "Shufflin' Jive" getknocked out. Always liked that one. Also think the Gladiolas record ispretty good and would have done better in a different matchup.

Post by DianeEAlso think the Gladiolas record ispretty good and would have done better in a different matchup.

Matchups can be critical. The eventual tournament winner and runner-up will, intheory at least, not be affected by any earlier matchups, but that's not thepoint - most folk, I imagine, like to watch their nominations progress thru therounds even if they think one or two will not reach the Finals (they are happyenough to have given exposure to an obscure favorite) .

A flaw in the tournament is the *lack of transparency* regarding matchups - itpotentially invites paranoia (a suspicion of occasional match-up 'fixing' inorder to favor or disfavor specific nominations).

Here is one totally transparent method, and it's very simple:First, list the nominations in the order they were posted; for example:

Post by DianeEAlso think the Gladiolas record ispretty good and would have done better in a different matchup.

Matchups can be critical. The eventual tournament winner and runner-up will, intheory at least, not be affected by any earlier matchups, but that's not thepoint - most folk, I imagine, like to watch their nominations progress thru therounds even if they think one or two will not reach the Finals (they are happyenough to have given exposure to an obscure favorite) .A flaw in the tournament is the *lack of transparency* regarding matchups - itpotentially invites paranoia (a suspicion of occasional match-up 'fixing' inorder to favor or disfavor specific nominations).Bill1234Bob5678...441,5,9,1317,21,25,2933,37,41,26,10,14,1822,26,30,3438,42,3,711,15,19,2327,31,35,3943,4,8,1216,20,24,2832,36,40,44post-prelim matchups, that meet the required criteria, could also be determinedsystematically (aka transparently).

---------------Wouldn't it just be easier to bring Yolanda Vega out of retirement?

The best way to avoid paranoia about the process is to not care about the outcome.

Try using that logic with millions of Democrat voters following the 2016election - many to this day do not accept the result :-)

What about the multitude of people over here (including high rankingpolitical figures) who still refuse to accept the democratic Brexitreferendum result and have consequently plunged the country into aseemingly never-ending political crisis and total humiliation in theeyes of a watching world

Post by Roger FordWhat about the multitude of people over here (including high rankingpolitical figures) who still refuse to accept the democratic Brexitreferendum result and have consequently plunged the country into aseemingly never-ending political crisis and total humiliation in theeyes of a watching world

After reading a bit more about the impact on trade agreements if Britain leavesthe EU, I have my own theory as to one major reason the so-called elites are soopposed to a no deal Brexit. It's the immense and complex effort required by thecivil service (think Sir Humphrey Appleby :-) to reconstruct UK-EU traderelations, and to re-negotiate World Trade Organization deals, which couldinvolve getting the approval of each of the other 160+ WTO nations!!!

Many people might not realise that the EU has important trade agreements withthe WTO. If Britain leaves the EU it will no longer be able to take advantage ofthese agreements and will have to negotiate new, unilateral agreements toreplace them.

To quote from the introduction to eBook "Brexit Beckons: Thinking ahead byleading economists" - written in the months following the referendum in 2016.

"UK policy in many areas has been made at the EU level for decades. Leaving theEU thus means that the UK will have to replace EU policies, rules, andagreements with British policies, rules, and agreements. As we shallsee, this will prove a massively complex task..."

..."many of the UKs rights and obligations in the WTO are entwined with thoseof other EU members."

"Perhaps the most serious economic issue in the WTO package of Brexit problemsis the WTOs Government Procurement Agreement (GPA). This is the agreement thatgives British companies the right to bid for government purchasing contracts inother members of the agreement. As these members include most major economies,being part of this agreement is important economically for UK-based firms. Rolloand Winters, for example, note that the annual value of procurement activitiesopened up by membership in the GPA is $1.3 trillion.One of the reasons that this could be difficult is that fact that the UKsparticipation in the GPA is only via the EUs participation in the agreement. Ifthe UK is not allowed to remain a party to the agreement, the UK will lose itsrights of access to all GPA members procurement markets upon exit from the EU.Moreover, since the UKs procurement market is important globally, Brexit willchange the deal that third nations struck with the EU on government procurement.In the world of trade, such changes trigger renegotiations to rebalance deals.In this way, Brexit will cause problems for the EU. This matters since allexisting GPA members, including the EU, have the right to veto the UKsaccession to the GPA."While sticky and surely slow to resolve, the WTO headaches may not be a majorsource of problems since WTO members tend to apply the status quo until a newarrangement is negotiated  as long as everyone plays nice. As Rollo andWinters point out, maintaining the goodwill of trading partners should be avery high diplomatic priority.

Post by DianeEAlso think the Gladiolas record ispretty good and would have done better in a different matchup.

Matchups can be critical. The eventual tournament winner and runner-up will, intheory at least, not be affected by any earlier matchups

I agree that matchups can be critical, but the eventual tournament winner and runner-up can also beaffected by any earlier matchups. For example, what if everyone ranked the same 4 songs as their 4favorites of the tournament, you would expect that 2 of those songs would end up as the top 2 givenmost (or, at least, many) matchups . But if those 4 songs met in one round, any of them couldfinish 3rd or 4th, depending on how the voters rank those songs. One song that might end up as theeventual tournament winner with a more reasonable set of matchups could end up 3rd in this matchupof these 4 top songs. For example, say 7 people ranked it as #1 while 5 people ranked it as #4.That would give it 7*4 + 5*1 = 33 points. There are a total of 120 points, so that leaves 87points for the other 3 songs. If one of those were ranked #3 by 5 people and #4 by 7 people, itwould get 2*5 + 4*1 = 14 points. That leaves 73 points for the other 2 songs. There are manyways that people could rank those 2 songs so that they end up with a 37-36, 38-35, or 39-34 split(even 40-33 could result in these 2 winning the round depending on tie-breaker rules).

Post by RWC, but that's not thepoint - most folk, I imagine, like to watch their nominations progress thru therounds even if they think one or two will not reach the Finals (they are happyenough to have given exposure to an obscure favorite) .A flaw in the tournament is the *lack of transparency* regarding matchups - itpotentially invites paranoia (a suspicion of occasional match-up 'fixing' inorder to favor or disfavor specific nominations).

I trust that Bruce is not trying to "fix" the match-ups other than to adhere to his criteria ofwhich songs shouldn't face others. But for the sake of curiosity, if not transparency, it would benice if he would explain exactly how how produces the match-ups.There are problems with this method. Bill and Bob face each other 3 times and don't face 9 otherpeople at all. Also, if the order of people were known in advance, people might try to order theirsongs to try to anticipate how their "opponents" might order their songs (I agree that this isfairly weak).

Post by RWCBill1234Bob5678...441,5,9,1317,21,25,2933,37,41,26,10,14,1822,26,30,3438,42,3,711,15,19,2327,31,35,3943,4,8,1216,20,24,2832,36,40,44post-prelim matchups, that meet the required criteria, could also be determinedsystematically (aka transparently).

it would be nice if he would explain exactly how how produces the match-ups.

Funny, I don't remember anyone asking Roger how he produced the matchups in those Battle contests.

I do it by creating a playlist in Musicmatch and then hitting "shuffle." The songs are shuffled at random, and those are the matchups. If there's a matchup that can't go, like 2 songs from the same nominator, the bottom one drops to the next group with the top one from that next group moving up.

it would be nice if he would explain exactly how how produces the match-ups.

Funny, I don't remember anyone asking Roger how he produced the matchups in those Battle contests.

Those Battle contests were song against song, with Roger expertly choosing thesongs.

The Obscure contest, on the other hand, is not just song against song. Each songhas an 'owner'... who might identify (to a degree depending on the individual -forget Bob :-) with its success or failure. I don't recall Bill 'whining' (touse his word) about any Battle outcome :-)

Post by DianeEAlso think the Gladiolas record ispretty good and would have done better in a different matchup.

Matchups can be critical. The eventual tournament winner and runner-up will, intheory at least, not be affected by any earlier matchups

I agree that matchups can be critical, but the eventual tournament winner and runner-up can also beaffected by any earlier matchups. For example, what if everyone ranked the same 4 songs as their 4favorites of the tournament, you would expect that 2 of those songs would end up as the top 2 givenmost (or, at least, many) matchups . But if those 4 songs met in one round

Yes, I should not have used the 'theory' word, but 'realistically' what are thechances of "everyone ranking the same 4 songs as their 4 favorites" *and* "those4 songs meeting in one round". And many (not all) nominators will rank their ownnominations ahead of all other nominations.

Post by Rick SchubertThere are problems with this method. Bill and Bob face each other 3 times and don't face 9 otherpeople at all. Also, if the order of people were known in advance, people might try to order theirsongs to try to anticipate how their "opponents" might order their songs (I agree that this isfairly weak).

Okay, then we need to prioritize nominator matchups - by allocating 4 nominatorsin the first instance (rather than songs) to each of 11 prelim matchups(assuming 44 nominations) such that a nominator appears 4 times in total *and*nominator pair matchups are minimized. This exercise is no longer trivial (orperhaps it is, Rick?), but, once the 'pattern' of 11 groups of 4 songs (usingsong numbers 1 - 44) has been worked out, this pattern can be used by thetournament organizer. Of course there would need to be patterns for othernomination quantities (eg 40 and 48), and these patterns would be made public.

Using shuffle in Musicmatch Jukebox is much simpler and quicker, but it's nottransparent and there's no control over nominator pair matchups - Musicmatchcould have Bill and Bob facing each other 3 times...

Surely there's more at stake with this tournament transparency issue than withTrump winning the election in 2016 or with the downfall of democracy in the UK- neither Trump nor Brexit keeps me awake at night...